Quotes About Writing

I think I'm good at metaphors and descriptions. Plot doesn't come naturally to me, so I work really hard at it.

I like to allow a story to arise as I'm writing scripts. I find it horrible when I try to think of something for the plot without really being on the ground and seeing where it goes.

I'm always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters.

The idea that I'm going to have to sit down to write some fiction where I'm going to have to think of a plot would really scare me, because it would come out a mess.

Normally I start with a plot, and write a synopsis, and the ideas come from the construction.

It's one of the most liberating things I experience in writing - letting yourself get rid of a gesture or character or plot point that always nagged, even if you couldn't admit to yourself that it did.

It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.

I admire Dickens beyond words. He is one of the greatest plotters of all times. Didn't have a clue about women, but he sure could plot.

I feel like I know how to write plot.

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going.

I feel a lot of adult fiction looks down on plot as a lesser form of literature.

In everything I've written, the crime has always just been an occasion to write about other things. I don't have a picture of myself as writing crime novels. I like fairly strong narratives, but it's a way of getting a plot moving.

In writing, I'm totally anti-plans of any kind. All my attempts to plan and plot novels have come to grief, and in expensive ways.

Sometimes, like in 'Invisible Monsters,' I get too out of control, and instead of a plot point every chapter, I want a plot point in every sentence.

I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while.

I eat broccoli. I think about the plot. I pace in circles for hours, counter-clockwise, listening to music. I try to think of one detail in the scene I'm about to write that I'm really excited about writing. Until I can come up with that one detail, I pace.

There is no 'right' way to begin a novel, but for me, plot has to wait. The character comes first.

I feel like having details from their day and having a plot and action and things to do is much more revealing than having a character sitting and thinking to themselves. When I'm writing, I want people to actually have a goal, something that's dragging them forward.

Certain writers look down their noses at plot, and I think I might have been one of them until I tried it.

For me, plot always comes out of character, so I had to be sure of my characters.

What I have to outline is action and plot because I'm not particularly good at that.

I always pity people who have to write my plot synopses.

I don't know how to write a novel in the world of cellphones. I don't know how to write a novel in the world of Google, in which all factual information is available to all characters. So I have to stand on my head to contrive a plot in which the characters lose their cellphone and are separated from technology.

There are many oral historians in America, but my books are made using the rules of novel writing. I have a beginning, a plot, characters.